Smile
by VilyaSage
Summary: A captured moment one day in the Jedi Temple, preRotS. Anakin spends a few hours with a group of younglings, just having fun and making mischief with the Force. Quite the happy little ficlet. Enjoy!


**Smile**

This is set sometime after Anakin becomes a Jedi Knight but before the events of RotS, obviously. I know, it's short, but it's more of a ficlet, a highlight of a moment. It's not meant to be anything special--it was a birthday present for a friend. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Star Wars. It does, however, currently own me. ...You guys thinkI'm kidding.

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Six children, four of them human, one Twi'lek, and one Talz, all dressed in Jedi robes, all carrying training lightsabers, watched him with eager eyes. He could sense their excitement, their anticipation, their desire to _learn_. It was a wonderful feeling, one he could remember having himself, though under very different circumstances. 

Adding to that his own Knight status, and the expectation that he would have some skill, made Anakin Skywalker very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, in fact, that his face had turned a betraying shade of bright pink.

"What will you do, Master Skywalker?" asked the youngest, a human girl of four. She was at the age where younglings began lightsaber training, and Anakin had seen her hand reach for that precious weapon about once every three nanoseconds; not to draw it but just to touch it, to know it was there.

A lightsaber, after all, was strong proof and confirmation of being a Jedi, or at least of working toward being one. Anakin thought of his own blade, bright blue, modeled generally after Obi-Wan's, though adjusted, too, to fit Anakin's particular taste.

"Yes! Show us something!" begged another, this one a boy of about six. This brought forth a chorus of similar joyful shouts. Anakin grinned, his blush deepening.

They had hunted him down, the lot of them, and somehow gotten him in here. He couldn't even remember how, just that there had been a lot of laughing involved, and a good deal of tugging done to the lower half of his Jedi robes. And now they wanted him to show them something interesting, a Force trick of some kind.

He was at a loss. He couldn't think of a single thing. And he was getting steadily more uncomfortable.

"Please, Master Skywalker?" the youngest asked again, her wide blue eyes begging as much as her voice. Anakin smiled at her, lowering himself to one knee and resting his arm across his other knee, mechanical, gloved hand held palm-up in front of him. Reaching into one of the pouches on his belt with his other hand, he withdrew a handful of sparkling dust—remnants of this droid or that piece of collapsing starship caught in his robes or hair, saved for no real purpose—and threw it into the air above his mechanical hand.

The younglings drew closer, forming a tight half-circle around him, faces expectant, eyes shining.

The Force caught the metal scraps, turning them into a head-sized spinning globe of shining flecks that hovered just above his hand. A tug in the Force dimmed and narrowed the lighting, as well, until it focused entirely on his spinning sphere, sending rainbows of reflected light bouncing off the walls and floor.

The children chased the spinning light, shrieking with laughter. He watched them stalk or pounce on their chosen patches, victorious until the spin of the fragments carried the light away from them again, and they resumed the chase.

They all looked so _happy_, he thought. It was contagious—his own smile felt ready to crack his face in half. He hadn't been in the Temple at this age, but one look at any of the younglings around him almost made him wish he had been.

One of them stumbled across his foot, knocking solidly into Anakin's back. His concentration broken, the shards and scraps fell to the floor, and the lights returned. The boy who had tripped brushed off his robes, looking sheepish.

"Do something else!" begged the Twi'lek boy, eyes bright. "Something really hard!"

"Something really hard?" Anakin repeated, his smile turning into a mischievous grin. The younglings gathered close to him again, whispering to each other eagerly. Anakin's eyes found the fountain in the corner of the room, and his mind reached out toward it. A stream of water lifted itself from the fountain, trailing across the room above the heads of the younglings.

There was a quiet intake of breath as they watched it weave in and around itself. It was almost close enough for them to touch, and the youngest reached up, fingers stretching. Taking that as his cue, Anakin launched the water higher with a hard Force push…and let it go.

Droplets of water rained down on the younglings, who yelped and danced around, trying to avoid it. A good deal of water landed on Anakin, too, and he ran a hand through his hair, trying to avoid the worst of it.

"Get him!" one of the younglings cried. Six half-size Jedi were instantly flying through the air, in a collective tackle that knocked Anakin off his feet and down to the floor. He began to laugh, and it took him a moment to realize why.

They were _tickling_ him.

Well.

_Two_ could play at that game, he decided. Taking advantage of a momentary break, he lunged for the nearest, and tickled back. The others retaliated with a new attack, and Anakin was practically rolling with laughter. He caught each of the younglings in turn, but he knew he would be no match for all six of them.

Something was making noise. Jedi were attracted to the open door of the room. Most looked in, smiled, shook their heads, and continued walking. Some laughed quietly, watching for a while before moving on. One stood in the shadows, watching nearly the entire thing, face unreadable.

At last, Anakin yielded, breathless, soaking wet, and feeling better than he had for days. Around him, the younglings were equally as tired, and still laughing. The youngest sat on his back, stopping him from rising, but Anakin didn't care.

That had been _fun_. For one long, wonderful moment, he had felt pure _happiness_. He never wanted to lose that feeling.

She started tickling him again, lightly. He couldn't resist—he started laughing all over again, and another wrestling match quickly began, sending shrieks of laughter out the door and through the halls of the Jedi Temple.

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Your thoughts? This is my first time posting any kind of Star Wars writing...I hope you liked it! 


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